


Hands and Heart

by genarti



Category: Robin McKinley - Sunshine
Genre: Backstory, Family, Fluff, Gen, Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-25
Updated: 2006-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 11:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Sunshine's first memories is of standing in the kitchen, begging to help make a cake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hands and Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [boundbyspells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/boundbyspells/gifts).



> Thanks to Kat for the beta, and for listening to me flail about my time management. :)
> 
> Written for boundbyspells in [Yuletide 2006](http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/29/handsand.html).

One of my first memories is of standing in the kitchen, begging to help Mom. (My very first is just a flash of back yard and sunlight and my hands on a toy truck my gran gave me. Not much story there.) I think I was about four. I know, anyway, that Mom and Dad hadn't told me anything about the divorce yet, and that the counter seemed very high.

Mom was making a cake. She's not a baker like I am -- she doesn't need the kitchen the same way -- but she does need to feed people like I do, and she's pretty good at cooking. And maybe it was somebody's birthday. Or maybe she just wanted cake; I don't remember that part.

But I do remember I begged to help until I nearly cried. Until Mom finally picked me up and deposited me on the kitchen stool -- it was blue, I remember that, with lighter blue flowers painted across the back, and there was a charm in them against tipping over or breaking that made the whole chair faintly warm -- and let me stir the frosting.

* * *

When Mom first started waitressing at the coffeehouse, I was six. I'd been sick on and off for months, mostly on, and depressed even when I wasn't sick. The doctors she dragged me too all concluded it must be the divorce; it's only recently that I figured out it probably had at least as much to do with the tiny dark apartment that was all Mom could afford then. But Charlie found out that she had a sick kid and gave her an immediate raise, and it wasn't too long afterwards that we managed to scrape enough together to move into a nicer apartment with a lot of windows. I lay all day in the sunlight, and I got better. And Mom started making me cram so I wouldn't have to miss any of second grade. That was when I started spending a lot of time at the coffeehouse.

It was a lot smaller then. No bakery, obviously, but not much in the way of wines either, let alone the champagne we made a minor specialty of later. Mostly it was coffee and good solid diner fare, and of course friendly waitstaff. Charlie and Mom weren't dating then, although Charlie might have been interested already. I don't know. At seven, you don't fabulously pay attention to that.

What I liked was that Charlie called me Sunshine -- I was still getting used to being Rae all the time and never Raven, and a new nickname was nice, plus I liked that one a lot -- and that the place always smelled good, and there was always food around. I could sit in the back with a comic book, _Others Alive_ or _Weird Tales_ or one of the other kiddie-spooky series, or with flash cards and worksheets, and Mom would bring me free refills of lemonade. Or I could wander into the kitchen, as long as I stayed well out of everyone's way. I wasn't technically supposed to be in there, by law, but Charlie didn't care. He wouldn't let me touch anything, but there was a stool in the corner I could perch on and watch everything. On a good day, someone would explain to me what they were doing and why, and give me a taste of the result.

I think I'd have ended up a baker anyway. But Charlie's kitchen cemented it.

* * *

The first time I baked cinnamon rolls, they were an unmitigated carthaginian disaster.

The sugar overpowered the cinnamon, and there wasn't enough of either, although it wouldn't have helped much if there had been because the dough didn't rise right. They were dense and lumpen and looked like cinnamon-swirled hockey pucks, and tasted kind of like them too. Plus the frosting was too thick, so I had to thin it down before I could slather it on, and by the time I'd thinned it down enough I had enough frosting to cover twice as many rolls as I had, except if the rolls came out like _that_ it was a good thing I didn't have twice the number. I was thirteen, and I'd baked them because I'd just had a fight with Mom about whether or not I was old enough to date Warren, who was fifteen and liked to smoke out behind the school, although I hadn't told Mom that, and so I wanted to bake something new to unwind. Instead of feeling better they made me want to cry, and I threw them all in the trash, hurling them into the bin one by one, and made triple-chocolate cookies instead.

The second time I tried was two weeks later, and I wasn't in a tearing fury that time. (Mom still hadn't given in on Warren, but I'd decided I didn't like him as well as I liked Nick, although I hadn't informed her of that fact. And we hadn't discussed the matter that day.) I'm stubborn, which anyone who's ever met me could tell you, some of them in great detail, and I wanted to get it right if only to prove that I could.

The crumb wasn't perfect, and they could have been fluffier. And I decided, upon reflection, they could use a bit more cinnamon.

By the fourth try, they'd been declared a family favorite; by the sixth, Kevin had started hugging my knee and asking "Big Sis, cin'on?" and I'd worked out a recipe I was pretty happy with.

By the tenth try, they'd become one of _my_ favorites, too.

* * *

The first time I met Mel, I was elbow-deep in dough and covered in flour, and I didn't even notice him for a minute. Cinnamon roll dough takes a lot of attention, when you make it in the corner of a crowded kitchen in batches big enough to feed our morning regulars without selling out in the first half hour. (I aim for at least two or three hours. After that, all bets are off, at least for the cinnamon rolls. Muffins last longer, plus they're a lot quicker to make, so I can make more batches over the course of the day, and croissants trickle out till lunch at least. So I didn't notice that anyone was in the doorway until Charlie cleared his throat and said "New cook to meet you, Sunshine."

Mel's handshake was firm and his hands warm -- they always are, even on cold days -- and, while the first thing I noticed was all his tattoos, the second thing I noticed was his smile.

I was dating someone else at the time, and Mel wasn't the reason we broke up. That was because Will didn't work at the coffeehouse, and wasn't ever quite happy with the way I had to go to bed at a horrifically early hour every day because I woke up at four-thirty to make cinnamon rolls, and given all that it's mostly a surprise that we lasted as long as we did. Which wasn't very.

But even the first day, I liked Mel's smile.

* * *

Charlie built the bakery for me after I'd graduated from high school by the skin of my teeth and the concerted nagging and help of my whole family and a good number of the coffeehouse regulars. It was something he'd been planning anyway, and not a graduation present (and it would have been awfully late for a present anyway), but it seemed like one to me. Much better than the combox that was Mom and Charlie's actual present to me.

It took months to build, of course, even with a few of the construction-inclined regulars pitching in and giving us special deals in return for eternal gratitude and a lot of free coffee and baked goods. The place was even more of a madhouse than usual while they were working on it, and we had to try to keep plaster dust out of the kitchen and eating area, and did actually close for a few days, which we never do if we can help it. But we decided even depriving our regulars for a little while was worth avoiding the hassle, and anyway there are health codes. I used to be able to name them; Mom probably still can, and cite you line and quote.

But it was done, finally, and when they cleaned out the last bit of mess, Charlie let me be the first one into the room. There were no pans in there yet, and the bread oven wasn't hooked up, and the stove and racks and so forth hadn't even been brought in. It was already cramped even without them -- or it would be, I could see, when it had all its furniture -- and it still smelled of plaster dust and fresh paint, and it was so bare and new and totally unused that it hardly felt like a real kitchen.

It was beautiful.

It was beautiful, and it was _mine_ , and I stood in the center of the room and spread my arms and spun slowly, looking at everything, and I couldn't stop myself from grinning like a fool, and Charlie and Mom watching me were grinning almost as much. I barely noticed them.

It was my bakery, and already it felt like home.


End file.
